Mrs. Owen's First Grade Happenings: October 2012

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Week of October 29, 2012

Dear Parents:

It has been a difficult couple of weeks, especially last week. I appreciate so much your caring, understanding, and prayers for Mrs. Weinman and her family. It is so hard and incredibly sad to lose a friend and colleague, someone you see every day. She definitely touched many lives in so many ways. Thank you for understanding the need to close school on Monday so that her friends and colleagues are able to be together to say good-bye.

One of Mrs. Weinman's favorite days was the Halloween Parade and Fall Festival which will take place Wednesday. The parade begins at 8:30. Please send your child to school in his or her costume. The children may wear play clothes to the festival so please send some for your child to change into after the parade. Don't forget shoes and underwear! If you are accompanying your child to the festival, please be at the classroom no later than 9:45 to pick up your child. There will be a sign-out sheet at our classroom. Please be sure to sign your child out. You will not have to do so at the office. If someone else will be picking your child up, please send a note or email to let me know. Otherwise, they will be dismissed to the festival at 9:45.

Math: This week I hope to finish unit 3. We'll be counting and exchanging dimes, nickels, and pennies and learning to write money amounts using dollar and cents notation. We'll explore domino-dot patterns and practice all of the basic addition facts through domino addition. The plan is to take the unit 3 assessment next Monday.

Science: We will finish up our study of the human body this week. We'll learn about the largest organ of our body - our skin. We'll also spend some time reviewing all that we have learned about the amazing human body. Their "pocket" books will be coming home either the end of this week or early next week. Please celebrate with your child all that we have learned and all of their hard work! It has been such a fun unit!

Reading Workshop: We are noticing how quotation marks capture talk and help us to know who is talking. We are learning to change our voice when we see different types of punctuation, such as questions, exclamations, ellipses, etc. Paying attention to punctuation helps us to make meaning of what we are reading and to read books and poems as the author intended.

Word Work: We continue working on words with short vowel /e/. This week we are focusing on the word families _eg, _est, and _ell. We’ll continue to work with 2 and 3 letter initial blends and digraphs.

Writing Workshop: We will continue with our poetry unit. Look for a sampling of your child's poetry to be displayed in the breezeway at Poetry in the Park.

Don't forget that we are collecting needed items for the animals at the SPCA for our first grade service-learning project. We will take all of the donations to the SPCA on Wednesday, November 14. We'll leave school at 10:45 and should return by 2:00. We will be eating a picnic lunch at the SPCA so please be sure to send a completely disposable lunch with your child that day. If you have purchased a school lunch for that day, Sage will provide a bag lunch for your child. Parents are welcome to accompany us to the SPCA but will need to drive separately. We will not have room on the bus.

Also, please remember that our class will be celebrating Thanksgiving on Thursday, November 15 at 1:45. The other classes will celebrate on Friday, but because we have two birthdays to celebrate on Friday, I have moved our Thanksgiving celebration to Thursday.

Other Things to Remember:

The Book Fair will take place next week! Our class will be browsing on Tuesday morning at 10:05. If you would like to come shop with your child, you can do so before or after school, before 8:25, or during recess (1:00 - 1:30) each day.
Poetry in the Park will be on Thursday, November 8^th at 8:30 a.m. Our class will recite the poem, "The Creature in the Classroom" by Jack Prelutsky. Please keep working with your child on this poem at home using lots of expression in both voice and face!
Next Friday, November 9th, is a Professional Development Day for teachers. There will be no school for students.
Field trip to the SPCA will be Wednesday, November 14.
The Holiday Gift Drive begins December 3^rd and ends December 14^th.

Volunteers this week:

Wednesday - No check-out this week
Thursday - Math Game (10:30) - Deborah Shipley
Friday - Art (9:15) - Mary Hind
Friday - Parent Reader - (2:15) - Charlene Hosseini

Take care -
Susan

Monday, October 22, 2012

Week of October 22, 2012

Dear Parents:

Thank you so much for coming to our writing celebration on Friday! The children were so excited to read their stories to you over and over and over! You wrote such heart-felt and inspiring compliments to the children. Thank you for celebrating them as the authors they are! Oh, and I can't forget to thank you for the delicious treats many of you provided - what a feast! Such wonderful children deserve wonderful parents and I appreciate you ALL! I have lots of pictures from the celebration but am unable to post any in the blog right now as there is still an issue with my computer involving iphoto. I hope it will be resolved this week and I will be able to download photos to our class shutterfly site. I promise pictures will also be coming of the cow eye dissection last week and the homecoming pep rally.

Your child's individual first grade pictures came home at the end of last week. I thought they were all fabulous! However, picture retakes are tomorrow. If you would like your child's picture retaken, please send in the picture package with your child tomorrow.

Last week, Sharon Hauser from the SPCA brought her dog, Rusty, to meet our first graders and kick off our first grade service-learning project. This morning, she brought Rusty to Town Meeting to help us tell the rest of the lower school about our service-learning project to help the SPCA. Mrs. Hauser adopted Rusty from the SPCA about 10 years ago. Check out the Service Learning link on e-bytes to see pictures of Rusty and the childen from last week. You will see why we fell in love with him! This week some of the children will be visiting the other classes of the lower school to tell them about our service project and to encourage them to donate items on the wish list for the animals at the SPCA. Thank you to Charlene Hosseini for bringing in the bins for collecting the needed items. The bins, located in the hallways and breezeways, need filling! Blankets, towels, treats, food, chew toys are just a few of the items you might consider sending in. Check out the SPCA website for a complete list of things they need.

http://www.spcatampabay.org/page.aspx?pid-396

Reading Workshop: Readers listen to the "song" of a text by reading with fluency, phrasing, and the sounds of stories and poems. Over the next few weeks, we'll work on reading in a voice that sounds like talking by reading in phrases and, of course, rereading when necessary. We'll also continue to pay attention to punctuation as we read and to use a storyteller voice that expresses the mood of the text. We’ll not only be reading books during this workshop time, but we'll be reading lots of poetry as well. We’ll look at how poets “see” things, listen for the “music” and the “voice” of poetry, and learn to appreciate all types of poetry. While we have learned many strategies for figuring out tricky words, we want to learn how to use the most efficient strategy. We’ll practice all the strategies we have learned including using chunks and analogies (word families) and to help read new or tricky words in the poems we read. Poetry in the Park will be our culminating celebration for this unit. You’ll enjoy a wonderful morning of poetry as you hear our poem as well as many others. You’ll also get to see some of our own poetry displayed!

Word Work: We are working on words with short vowel /e/ and the word families _ed, _en, _et, and _ent. We’ll continue to work with 2 and 3 letter initial blends and digraphs as in fled or shred. We will also learn about nouns.

Writing Workshop: We are beginning our poetry unit of study in writing as well. We’ll use our hearts, minds, and imaginations to take in the details of our lives in new ways. This week, we’ll spend some time observing the objects the children brought today. We’ll use all our senses as we describe them. We’ll look at these ordinary everyday things with a poet’s eyes. Then, we’ll practice changing our observations into poems by experimenting with line breaks (format).

Math: This week I am introducing a new routine called Frames and Arrows. You may refer back to the Unit 3 Family Letter for an explanation of it. You will also find a basic explanation in this week's homework calendar. We will also practice counting with a calculator and work with dimes.

Science: This week we are learning about our muscles, the lungs and respiratory system, and the digestive system. We will finish up this fantastic study of the human body next week. The children have loved it and so have I!

Just a heads-up! Our class will be celebrating two birthdays on Friday, November 16, which will be our last day of school before Thanksgiving break. Therefore, our class will have our Thanksgiving party at school on Thursday afternoon, November 15^th at 1:45. More information will come home about it later.

Things to remember:

The Halloween Parade and Fall Festival take place next Wednesday, October 31. The parade begins at 8:30. Please send your child to school in his or her costume. They will change after the parade into play clothes. If you are accompanying your child to the festival, please be at the classroom no later than 9:45 to pick up your child. Otherwise, they will be dismissed to the festival at 9:45.
The Book Fair will take place the week of November 5^th in the Janet Root Theater Lobby and the Student Center. Our class will be browsing on Tuesday morning at 10:05. If you would like to come shop with your child, you can do so before and after school, before 8:25, and during recess (1:00 – 1:30) each day.
Poetry in the Park will be on Thursday, November 8^th at 8:30 a.m. Our class voted to recite the poem, "The Creature in the Classroom" by Jack Prelutsky. The poem was sent home last week. Please keep working with your child on memorizing this poem at home.
The Holiday Gift Drive begins December 3^rd and ends December 14^th.

Volunteers this week:

Wednesday - Library Checkout (2:10) – Amber Ferrol and Kristen Danielson
Thursday - Math Game (10:30) – David Richardson
Friday - Art – (9:15) Kim Gross

Take care and love each other…

Susan

Monday, October 15, 2012

Week of October 15, 2012

Dear Parents:

Thank you for all the good wishes for my new grandson. I loved being with Owen and Chase and being able to witness the birth of Chase. It was hard to leave them, but, I also missed my children here at school so that made it easier to leave them and come home. Mr. Schiaparelli and Mrs. Rauman did a fantastic job while I was gone! Mr. S kept me updated and worked flawlessly from my plans. He took pictures while I was gone and posted them on our class Shutterfly site. Thank you Mr. S!

I've been having a lot of trouble both with my laptop and with my internet at home so I was not able to get a blog done this past week. I am so sorry. My laptop is still "in the shop" so I am working on a desktop in the classroom to get this done. Unfortunately, many of the pictures that I want to post are on my laptop so I will get those posted when I get it back. I might even post a picture of Chase and Owen if you don't mind indulging me!

Today, we kicked off our first grade service learning project at school! Sharon Hauser of the SPCA brought her dog Rusty to meet us! She adopted Rusty from the SPCA a few years ago. She talked to us about how to take care of pets and what we can do to help the animals at the SPCA. She and Rusty will also be at Town Meeting next Monday to help first grade introduce our service learning project with the whole lower school. We will be collecting items that the SPCA needs during the next several weeks. Then first grade will go to the SPCA and take all of our donations. We began this project last year and the overwhelming support was amazing! There will be a bin in each hallway (K - 4th) to collect donations from anyone that is willing to help us. You can go on the SPCA website www.spcafl.org to find out the items they need now to help our furry friends. Some examples are Hill's/Science Diet dog and cat food, dog biscuits, cat treats, brooms, dust pans, mops, paper towels, blankets, towels, tennis balls, and latex gloves. There are many more items on the website. Check it out with your child!

Paws for Reading!

To go along with our service learning project, our class has also joined with kids across the country to pledge to read every day to help donate 250,000 books to kids in need! Each child joined a team - either the cats or the dogs - and pledged to read at least 20 minutes at home every day! Today each child brought home his/her own screen name and password to use to log their minutes read at the Paws for Reading website (www.scholastic/com/paws). Their pledge cards and more information came home on Thursday. A paper reading log is also attached to the homework calendar for your child to turn in at school. The contest ends December 15.

During science last week, we learned about the heart. Some of the really fun activities were having Mrs. Peck come and teach us about the heart while dissecting a real cow's heart! We learned about the 4 chambers and how the heart pumps the blood through the body. Also, on Thursday Mai Nguyen (a former parent of mine) brought an ultrasound machine and each child was able to see their heart beating on the screen as well as seeing blood vessels. So cool! Cyrus's mom, Charlene Hosseini, was also here and worked with the children taking blood pressure, using stethoscopes to listen to their hearts, and various other medical tools to check reflexes and hearing. The kids loved it! This week, we will be learning about the muscular system of our body and about our eyes. Mrs. Peck will be visiting us one more time on Tuesday to teach us about the eye using real cow eyes! I have pictures and will post them on our shutterfly site as soon as I am able.

In Math this week, we are learning about number grid patterns; counting, adding, and subtracting on the number line; and practicing telling time to the half hour.

In Reader's Workshop this week, we have begun exploring the patterns in books. Many of the just right books we read have patterns that we can use as a tool for improving accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. We noticed today that patterns are also often found in poetry. We will spend the next several weeks reading and enjoying poetry. We also chose a poem for our class to recite at our upcoming Poetry in the Park! I read five different poems to the children, they voted on their favorite, and the winner was "The Creature in the Classroom" by Jack Prelutsky. The poem came home today along with a note. Please practice at home every day with your child!

This week our word work will focus again on words with short u and the phonograms _ug, _um, up, and _ump. We're also working on beginning blends so please practice these with your child at home. Remember that our spelling tests are application focused. If you can spell bug, you can spell shrug!

In Writer's Workshop, we chose a piece from our personal narrative (small moment) unit for publishing. We began working with our partners as "editors" today to help us fix up our pieces. We will be celebrating on Friday at 12:15. Please join us if you can. Next week, we will begin writing pattern books and poetry.